Voting for Gingrich? The greatest act of hypocrisy in Carroll County history

One of our newspaper’s more popular and meaningful sections is Wednesday’s Today’s Living page. Each week, we print announcements of wedding anniversaries — 25-year and 50-year celebrations, and once in a while, a diamond anniversary of 60 or 70 years of matrimony. Several years ago I wrote a story about (the now late) Jack and Grace Juergens who had been married for 70 years.

We are a county built on strong families and marriages. In fact, the founding and dominant religion of Carroll County, Catholicism, is unequaled among major American churches in its hostility to the dissolution of marriage.

For most Carroll County residents the most significant accomplishment in life is a long, strong marriage. Read our obituaries. Most people don’t have exciting career paths or take-your-breath-away life narratives full of travel and adventures. They work hard in strenuous jobs for a reason: to sustain loved ones, to build a family that is second only in importance in life to their relationship with God.

This is the Carroll County culture. It is celebrated and promoted at every possible turn. It is the culture in which I came of age. It is the Carroll County I cover today.

Which raises a question: How in Father Joseph Kuemper’s Carroll County can three-times-married Newt Gingrich be a serious candidate for the presidency of the United States?

Has my hometown been lying to me all these years about its values?

Marriage is the beating heart of our culture. I know this well because I’m an outsider, an adopted kid born out of wedlock, raised largely by a single mother and never married myself. The culture here doesn’t quite fully accept folks like me who don’t fit into the folds of traditional marriage. Fair enough. I know the rules. I’ve accepted them. I’m not complaining.

But are these rules about to change?

If Georgia Republican Gingrich wins the Carroll Iowa Tea Party pre-caucus caucus tonight at the Santa Maria Winery or takes the county in the Jan. 3 Iowa Caucuses what message does that send?

“Ah, yeah, we weren’t really serious about the last 150 years of values.”

Or — “We hate President Obama so much we will sell our souls. Now give us our fiddles — err, we mean Newt Gingrich bumper stickers.”

If Gingrich wins Carroll County, it will be the greatest act of collective hypocrisy in our history.

Serious question: Where would the institution of marriage be in the United States of America if all our nation’s citizens had been married three times like Gingrich? How damaged would children be if they each had to deal with these three women during Christmas: a mom, an ex-stepmom and a new stepmom? They’d be running, screaming and with hands in the air, for the orphanages Gingrich wanted to build during his days as speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

In his 1998 book “Lessons Learned the Hard Way,” Newt Gingrich refers to his second wife, Marianne (Ginther), as “the woman I love,” “my best friend” and my “closest advisor.”

During the period of the book’s writing and publication Gingrich was involved sexually with congressional aide, Callista Bisek, his third and current wife — who is 23 years younger than the Georgia Republican.

The Daily Times Herald questioned Gingrich about the fact that he has been married three times and gone through two divorces, whether it is fair to view this biographical data and the cheating that accompanied the transitions between wives as windows into his character.

If he would cheat on a woman who was his best friend, true love and closest adviser, how can voters he doesn’t know personally trust him?

How can the nation be certain that a man who was cheating on his wife in his 50s won’t put the nation through another Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal?

“I think you look at the totality of my life and you have to decide whether or not the fact that I have been open about having made mistakes — and I have been open about having to go to God for forgiveness and for reconciliation — and you have to look at the life we have now,” Gingrich told The Daily Times Herald.

So here’s the choice: Gingrich is saying: don’t judge me for past deeds. Judge me for current actions.

Yet at the same time, Gingrich is criticizing GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney for saying: Don’t judge me for what I said in the past. Judge me for what I’m saying now.

I’m confused here. Aren’t deeds supposed to matter more than words?

At the end of the day, elections and candidates come and go, but a successful community demands core values. A Gingrich win in Carroll County will make an eye-rolling mockery of those values. It will make some of us wonder if they ever were our values.

If in the eyes of Carroll voters respect for marriage doesn’t make a lick of difference in the life of a presidential candidate, then at the very least have the decency to quit telling me it matters in mine.

And you don’t get a pass here for saying, “Well, Clinton cheated, too.”

Yes, President Bill Clinton did. But he remained married.

What’s more admirable in the eyes of the church? Getting a divorce? Or battling through sin and staying married to the one and only woman to whom you said vows before God?

Take the names Clinton and Gingrich out of the question, replace them with Smith and Jones, and think about it.

i think that istead of condeming the idea of infidelity people should know the signs of cheating instead and combat it that way http://www.paranoogle.com/10-signs-of-a-cheating-spouseThis comment has been hidden due to low approval.

Are you serious? With all of the problems our country is having right now, I can hardly call NOT voting for Obama "selling my soul." Yes, marriage is important. But are we willing to throw out a better future for America because of someone's social past? And how does Bill Clinton get a clean slate for publicly humiliating his wife and family, yet you condemn Gingrich for getting married three times? Why don't we just throw everyone out of politics who has ever gotten a divorce? This opinion is a slippery slope lobbing all divorced people into society's preverbial "Morlocks." This article is as ignorant as those it criticizes. -from a supporter of Clinton and Gingrich.This comment has been hidden due to low approval.

People in glass houses should not throw stones. Everyone has flaws, being willing to accept and forgive is one of our greatest qualities as human beings. You have to ask yourself the question: Do I believe his policies and vision will help my country more than what the current President has done or wants to do? If you believe in the policy then you can believe in the man. Regardless, there will always be something that we disapprove.This comment has been hidden due to low approval.

As a fiscal and social conservative from Kentucky I can tell you that I’m watching with great interest to see if those who proclaim to be conservative and supporters of the Tea Party in Iowa WILL BE TRUE to their pronouncements or if they will CONTRADICT themselves by voting for Gingrich or Romney. I encourage the truly conservative voters of Iowa to not be deceived by Gingrich or Romney and the establishment media. Awake from your slumber and stand your ground. Repudiate their K Street progressive, big government ideology. They are members of the good ole boys club. The truly conservative people of our nation are looking to you to send a loud and clear message to those who have been hypocritical self serving establishment politicians and the media manipulators. You must tell them that you choose principle over party. Tell them you will no longer be co-opted and duped by the business as usual Neo Con and RINO. Do not buy their electability argument, don’t settle for someone who is a contradiction of your core values and beliefs. Be true to yourself. If you are not true to yourself then the influence of the Tea party will fade away and our children and grand children will suffer because you believed a lie. One more point, a great debater (smooth talker) does not necessarily a great president make. Actions speak louder than words.This comment has been hidden due to low approval.

This country was built on family values and divorce is destroying this country. You can thank Tittle IV-D of The Soical Security Act for this since it rewards states monetarily for every non-custodial parent it creates. The Family Courts do not put the children first any more than politicians putting the people first.

Veterans For Ron Paul 2012This comment has been hidden due to low approval.